Teen Paralyzed by Gunshot Confronting His Life

Friday

Feb 1, 2013 at 4:06 PM

PLANT CITY | Jake Castillo raises his SpongeBob shirt. To explain, it's easier to show than tell.

By MATTHEW PLEASANTTHE LEDGER

PLANT CITY | Jake Castillo raises his SpongeBob shirt. To explain, it's easier to show than tell.He points to a wrinkled spot of flesh on his back, a scar from a gang member's bullet, one that severed his spine. More scars line his chest, the reminders of a surgeon's careful incisions.He tugs again at his shirt, points to his neck. Another bullet, another scar.Jake, whiling away time in front of a TV, tells how he used to spend his afternoons: Climbing a tree outside his old home in Lakeland, inching up a rope that hung from its highest branch. Up there, he felt safe.The memory leads to another: "I wanted to be a famous football player."Unsure what to say next, the 13-year-old pulls a blanket from his motionless legs and over his head, ruffling his hair. He stares through the folds of fabric and into the Plant City home he shares with an aunt.Two years later, memories of a shooting that almost killed him and took the life of his older brother are still clear. At a trial in December, Jake shared those memories for almost an hour, his vivid recollection impressing a prosecutor.Last month, a judge sent the young shooter to prison for life.The case over, Jake still confronts how it changed his life. At the same time, life moves forward.Keeping up means pushing a wheelchair.

--- The last time Jake used his legs, he stood on his porch Jan. 8, 2011. He lived in a west Lakeland mobile home crowded with relatives. An aunt cared for him and his brothers after their mom was deported to Mexico.Jake, 11 at the time, ate from a plate of eggs and strained to hear his brothers' conversation.Their friend pedaled up to their West Parker Street home on a bicycle. A van passed, then made an immediate U-turn, heading back by their home.Jake thought such vehicles were menacing, with their loud music and eyes staring from the windows.Instinct always told him to go inside. But that afternoon, it was the voice of his brother, Juan Castillo, 19, yelling for him to take cover.Jake turned toward his front door. Bullets flew from the van. A prosecutor would later theorize the first one struck him in the neck, and, as he turned, a second hit him in the back.At the foot of the porch steps, his brother lay dead.Jake fell face first, landing halfway in his home. His plate shattered. Blood pooled behind his shirt, but he didn't know what happened. His legs felt as if they were asleep, he said, similar to how they feel today."They feel …" Jake searches for a word, rubbing a hand over his thin calves, Spider-Man ankle socks stretched over his small feet, "weird."

---Jake had to be revived twice, once during a helicopter ride to Tampa General Hospital and again on an operating table. A doctor cut open his chest and pumped his heart by hand.Alive again, the boy's arms stirred, but doctors noticed his legs were limp, said Hortencia Ortega, his aunt. After the emergency surgery, a doctor told Ortega that spinal damage would prevent Jake from ever walking again.She told Jake, still confined to a hospital bed. His frustration seemed to stew under the surface until three months later when he returned home. Then he began to intentionally harm his paralyzed legs. One time, he left a microwaved meal sitting on his lap, its hot tray searing his thigh. It left a scar.One decision couldn't wait until he came to terms with his injury. The summer after the shooting, he had to choose whether to continue home school or return to class. For Jake, the decision was easy. He wanted to start sixth grade, navigating campus in a wheelchair.Ortega, delighted by his decision, had feared too much time at home would prolong his recovery."I wanted him to be out," she said, "and not be to scared."Close friends needed no explanation why he was in a wheelchair. If other students asked, he made up a story: He fell from a tree and broke his legs.He didn't want everyone — strangers, at least — to know the truth. But soon he'd have to tell the true story. And more than classmates would be listening.

---After the shooting, deputies quickly arrested Alejandro Baez-Garcia, a gang member who lived about two miles from Jake. He readily admitted to detectives that he fired shots from the passing van.Baez-Garcia, then 18, said he had recognized a friend of the Castillo brothers outside the West Parker Street home that afternoon as someone he said tried to attack him in a park.When the van he rode in drove past, he said, those outside the home threw rocks. So he pulled a .22-caliber pistol from his pocket and opened fire.To prepare for trial, Assistant State Attorney Hope Pattey visited Jake at his new home. She said he described the van and told her he saw a man inside with a gun. She didn't push him to describe the man. She wouldn't need him to identify him in court; other witnesses and Baez-Garcia's own admission placed him in the van with a gun.Jake, who'd received counseling, seemed happy. But certain fears lingered. Loud noises that sounded like gunshots, even a thunderclap, his aunt said, sent him from his wheelchair to the floor seeking cover.Then there was another shooting in November. Days before he testified, bullets flew at their Plant City house. Holes riddled their mail box and home. Ortega was unsure if those shots were meant for them or a neighbor, but she wouldn't have been surprised if someone tracked them down."The world is small," she said.

---Jake wheeled into a Polk County courtroom in December, a hoodie printed with pro wrestlers keeping him warm. His hair was shaved into a short mohawk. Pattey eased into her questions, asking him about school and finally broaching the shooting. He began a careful description: He sees his brothers outside. He sees a van. Then, without prompting, he pointed across the courtroom to the defense table. "I see him."Baez-Garcia lowered his tattooed face.His testimony was so strong, Pattey said, as if he were telling Baez-Garcia: You didn't get the best of me.

---Was he scared to testify?Jake scrunches his brow: No. Nervous, maybe. Not scared. "I was just trying to get it over with," he says.He mentions Juan and grows quiet. His brother, a former gang member, turned away from that life after earning a scholarship to college. He wanted a future. "Gangs don't lead you anywhere," Juan once told Jake. "Except death or prison."Jake, now a seventh-grader, wants to follow a path his brother might have taken. He sees himself in college one day, maybe studying technology.But he has emotional healing to do. He has yet to visit his brother's grave. Two years later, he says, it still feels too soon.Jake makes his other challenges — even the physical ones — seem manageable by comparison.When he tires of talking, Jake wants to go outside. He lifts his body from the couch and into his wheelchair then wheels himself to the door. Where other homes might have a ramp to ease his path, he has to navigate a cumbersome step.When he comes back inside, Jake reaches forward, grips his hands around the door frame and pulls. In a quick motion, he hoists himself forward and rumbles over the step.He lands safely on the other side.

[ Matthew Pleasant can be reached at matthew.pleasant@theledger.com or 863-802-7590. ]